Sticking to English, French, and German, which language has the best poetry, the best philosophy, and the best novels?

Poetry: English (Shakespare, Donne, Milton, Romantics, Modernists)
Novels: French (it's got Flaubert AND Proust!!!)
Philosophy: German (just for Witty, though Nietzsche and Husserl are also pretty cool)

...

The Anglo-American tradition in philosophy is easily the best one, but the most important figure of it is a German-speaker.

you literally stole that from Heidegger

German, with French as a close second.

Poetry: English, German, French
Philosophy: German, French, English
Novels: English, German, French

>Bertrand Russell
stopped reading there m8

french is the best for poetry lmao u trippin

/thread

although "(just for witty)" is dumb

haven't read too much french poetry but there are some godly german philosophers (celan, hölderlin, novalis, and rilke)

undoubtedly the best philosophy, currently going through some husserl right now

german novels are pretty fuckin dope too, reading Das Glasperlenspiel and Der Zauberberg at the moment, i find the language in particular to be highly enjoyable

even when i was learning german i felt it was much easier to speak in "philosophical terms" in comparison to english

anyways, deutscher Meisterrass

poetry english or german
philosophy who gives a shit but german
novels english

i speak english and german french is a shitty language

Germany, of course.

Kant, Hegel and Heidegger can go fuck themselves

Poetry: English closely followed by French
Philosophy: German
Novels: Obviously French

>German
>Poetry
>ever

Also Hume, Hobbes, Berkeley, Reid, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore, Kripke, Lewis, Sellars, Rawls

>I'm personally convinced that the German language is structurally conducive to complex philosophical thought
that's pretty dumb.

>Philosophy
German>French>English

>Novels
German=French=English

>Poetry
>French>=English>German

Overall, English, it's not even close.

>Novels it has Flaubert and Proust!
Nigga cmon english has Joyce, Dickens, Beckett and Faulkner...

>Glasperlenspiel
One can never read enough Hermann Hesse. Recommending Demian or Steppenwolf, obviously. Give his poetry a try, too.

>what is Sturm und Drang

Do you speak German, or did you just feel like sharing an uneducated opinion?

But Beckett wrote most of his novels in French even though he played a big part in the translation process.

All of it goes to English. Except for philosophy where Germany wins. Poetry you might be able to argue for the frogs.

>wittgenstein
>german

wittgenstein was british

No, he was Austrian. Got his main education in philosophy from Russell, though.

And Melville, Sterne, Cabell, etc
Still French is not bad for novels: Robbe-Grillet, Queneau, Proust, Flaubert, Stendhal, Gide, etc, It's really plays and poetry that put English on top, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Donne, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Yeats, Whitman, Hopkins, Browning, Synge, Shaw, etc

None of them are close to Kant.

if he spent almost his entire life in britain and was a professor in britain he can at the very least be considered a british philosopher

italy
italy
italy
OP is a fag
goodnight

Hume

I hear that the coarsest, ugliest-sounding languages tend to have some of the best poetry. German, Chinese, Old Norse, etc.

Hence why opera, wherein the words serve the music, is almost purely Italian until you get to the Romantic period, while the art song, wherein the music serve the words (which are unaltered poems), was dominated by German and French composers (English composers were busy obsessing over folk songs and also being basically nonexistent at the time).

and then I remembered I was on Veeky Forums, not /mu/.

French have Bloy, Huysmans, Sade, Bataille and Céline ?

Ranking of European Languages on Quality of all Written Works:

>God Tier
Ancient Greek
Latin

>High Tier
Russian
French
German

>Mid Tier
English
Italian
Spanish

>Low Tier
Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, etc.)
Central European Languages
Non-Russian Slavic languages
Everything else

>Shit Tier
Pourtuguese

Good ranking, I can agree with this.

>implying you know each of those languages in order to judge from the original source
>mfw

You can't even speak English

>English poetry
Gentilshommes, je vous en prie...

Putting Ancient Greek and Latin on top is what only an irrational classics-fetishizing pseud would do

I actually don't know if I hate anglos or germans the most.

French are regicidal degenerates but they at least have the excuse of having a lot of their original stock replaced with wops.

since walt whitman invented that you can simply write words in a column and call it poetry, english poetry went downwards

>Philosophy
Obviously German

>Novels
English

>Poetry
French

In the same sense that Eliot was an English poet, i.e.: he wasn't.

Whitman didn't invent blank/free verse but ok.

>2016 anno domini
>not knowing the difference between blank and free verse

this

>English speakers
>Karl Popper

>poetry
English obviously
>philosophy
Germany obviously
>Novels
Who cares, inferior art form. France I guess.

Holy shit, anglos are delusional. German wins novels and philosophy, french wins poetry.

He didn't invent free verse, but not knowing the difference between blank and free verse while trying to make that point is pretty embarrassing

just got done with narziß & goldmund about a month ago. pretty legit, but there are almost word for word passages in there from die Geburt der Tragödie!

Pretty much this and it's kind of obvious.

French philosophers have always been shallow just look at Camus or edgey like Satre or Voltaire. I am a big fan of Rousseau but he leaves something to be desired. He's for feels not reals and Kant does even that better. Other than Hobbes Locke and Hume, there are no important Anglophone philosophers.

Novels in French are obvious. They were more amorous and all novels are about adultery and hence cucking. Germans and English novelists are less obvious. Sure Goethe and Faulkner and Jane Austen and whatnot but the French are better overall.

Poetry is a hard call. Shakespeare and Donne come to mind but I need to read more poetry in French and not knowing German, I couldn't comment but they don't seem poetic.

>Camus, Sartre, Voltaire
Those aren't really philosophers.

>but the French are better overall.
I still think that English novels are far superior. With all the British authors, plus all the Irish authors, plus all the American authors, you really cannot compare.

As for poetry, French is, without a doubt, superior.

nah

You're just a contrarian

It's not even remotely contrarian. Pretty much anyone would agree that the English, French, German and Russian languages have many more interesting things to read.

>>Camus, Sartre, Voltaire
>Those aren't really philosophers

Exactly, you say French philosophy and you think of a bunch of nonentities. It is only natural because there is barely anyone of note. But there's something so voluptuous about French novels that is missing in English novels. In terms of American novels, there are some good ones but nothing on par with anything continental and then in terms of Britain, who really takes the cake?

In terms of French poetry, you have any recommendations? I can read fiction in French pretty easily now. I'm middling when it comes to reading comprehension. I do want to know some poets that will be down the line but in terms of entry level any ideas?

Then you're just a follower.

First to come to mind for French philosophy is postmodernists like Derrida & friends actually

> It is only natural because there is barely anyone of note
I'm not an expert of French philosophy but I'm pretty sure that Malebranche, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson and Condillac can be quite interesting.

>who really takes the cake?
People like Sterne and George Eliot for example. Plus a lot of Irish writers.

>In terms of French poetry, you have any recommendations?
As far as I know, Lamartine is a very good start. Typical romantic poet, some find him a bit boring, but the regularity and the precision of his poetry is quite remarkable. A very solid place to start.

>you say French philosophy and you think of a bunch of nonentities
Descartes.
>ctrl+f, no Descartes...
This whole discussion is stupid, but come on...

Serbo-Croatian deserves mid tier at least

English is a trash language for poetry. German wins there too.

Descartes wrote in Latin.

Poetry: English

Philosophy: German

Novels: English

In my own opinion, English is a paintbrush whereas German is a knife; that is why the former is so well suited to the 'arts', whilst the latter is better suited to the cold and occasionally mathematical logic that philosophy requires. That is not to suggest a preference; I like both in their own rights, though they have very different uses

The whole French literary tradition, if you ask me, is an exercise in sophistry; using Schopenhauer's definition of the term. That is, people who want to be recognized by others for their merits; rather than being content in their own knowledge.

Also, his philosophy was just a vehicle for his physics to get around Church doctrine.

>all of it goes to English
>except two thirds of it

lolwut

Wew I came up with that thought independently in my second semester of German am I a patrish????

>Poetry
German
>Philosophy
Obviously German
>Novels
German wins again.

>german 'poetry'

I get that Rilke is nice but he can't go toe to toe with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Eliot

All of them except philosophy. That's 1/3, I know you're on Veeky Forums but we expect a basic competence in elementary level math.

>Wordsworth

Please tell me you've heard of the poet Wordsworth before this thread. He's one of the more famous poets of the language.

he's obviously complete garbage, look at that shitty cover lmao

>German
>poetry
>German
>novels

It's just kind of embarrassing if you first heard about Wordsworth because of people here posting the notoriously bad book covers from that bargain bin publisher.

Better dead than red.

It's just kind of embarrassing that you like a "poet" who's legacy is a bunch of books that looks so fucking terrible he might as well have vomited all over them

French for novels (obviously), for poetry I couldn't say as I know only french poetry, and German for philosophy.

That's not really his legacy. The publisher just arbitrarily chose to take his name, probably because it has the word "word" in it, words being often featured in books, and they thought they were being clever.

>he doesn't get the irony of wordsworth covers

The covers are serious, not ironical, which is part of what makes them amusing.

>ironical

That is the appropriate adjectival form.

who cares, English is a shit tier language

You two mustn't read much, which makes your presence on a literature board strange.

>implying danish is low tier
Kierkegaard, Blixen, Johannes V. Jensen, Tom Kristensen, H. C. Andersen.

Official power rankings:
>Poetry
English, French, German
>Philosophy
German, English, French
>Novels
English, French, German

let me guess... non-native english speaker? Ironical is a word but it's archaic and makes you sound like a pseud. you have this 'try-hard' style of writing that is such a turn off. no wonder you cant get published.

Presumptuous of you to assume that I'm not published, or that I've ever attempted to become published. Perhaps I'm simply being ironical.

tfw monolingual american
tfw wanna read nietzsche in german
tfw would rather learn french
tfw spanish would be more useful

how do i decide